But more important is what's in the store. Developers have been working since February's Consumer Preview release to prepare a new batch of Metro-styled apps, with everything from games to newsreaders making the cut. Microsoft has even rounded up some of the best into a section called "Great apps for Release Preview." This collection includes TuneIn Radio, Box, Cocktail Flow, Allrecipes, Wikipedia, Music Maker Jam, and Kindle, in addition to three games: FitBall, Cut The Rope, and Pirates Love Daisies. These aren't all particularly inspired choices, but they do shed some light on how Microsoft thinks third-party Metro development should look.

The three featured games run pretty much as you might expect—fullscreen and devoid of any Metro styling. It's the remainder of the apps in the collection that are most interesting, and it's clear Microsoft is focused on making many users' first impression of the OS a visually striking one. Cocktail Flow, for example, is the best looking of the bunch. The app lists a number of popular cocktails, including recipes and required ingredients, with big photo representations for visual browsing. You can also add liquors and ingredients you own to your virtual bar, which filters potential recipes based on the liquors you have on hand. It's not an app with a lot of depth, but it perfectly encapsulates the sort of bold visual styling Microsoft hopes other developers will employ.

Enlarge/ Just in time for your Windows 8 Launch Party, Cocktail Flow will teach you how to mix your own drinks.

Surprisingly, the official Wikipedia app is another visually striking inclusion. The app opens not on encyclopedic text, but big, tiled pictures that link to related entries. Scrolling further to the left reveals a grid of featured articles and historical events that happened on this day. There is, however, a noticeable lack of polish when reading specific pages—arguably the feature that matters most in an app like this. Text doesn't always flow into columns nicely, and infoboxes are hidden away in screen-stealing pop-ups.

Music Maker Jam is perhaps the only featured pick with some degree of depth. The app is a simple music sequencer, though one that relies almost entirely on preset samples (users can choose between dubstep, jazz, or tech house musical stylings). The sequencer itself boasts big, finger-friendly buttons, where users can adjust the volume of various instruments and choose from different samples, effects, and musical keys. Though limited, this is probably one of the most interesting and interactive apps currently available in the Windows Store.

Enlarge/ Windows 8 has approximately 100% more wub than previous versions.

Finally, cloud storage app Box is worth a special mention, because it is the only featured app that is designed for productivity and day-to-day use. Here is the most convincing third-party use case for Metro as a work-capable interface you'll find thus far. Not only does it have an immensely clean design that retains the Box identity with the look and feel of Metro, but it is packed with most of the functionality you'll find using the company's traditional desktop app—everything from file uploads to comments and sharing and sorting.

From here, there isn't much else to see. Amazon's Kindle app works just as you'd expect from an e-reading application, with Metro flourishes throughout the library UI. TuneIn Radio is essentially one giant app of boxes on a grid, each of which represents a streaming radio station.

Beyond the Spotlight

Beyond Microsoft's collection of featured apps, things begin to get interesting. It doesn't take long to realize why Microsoft chose to feature the apps they did—many of the Windows Store's new additions lack the design and function polish of Microsoft's feature and first-party apps. Given that Windows 8 is still months away from Release Candidate status, this is to be expected. But for the time being, there exists a certain homogeneity in app design that leaves the greater third-party experience feeling relatively uninspired.

Worse still are the apps that aren't present. While there is no shortage of games scattered across the Windows Store—they get second billing after the Store's default Spotlight screen—other categories are not quite so lucky. Sports has four apps. Books and Reference have a mere eight. You don't even need to navigate to a dedicated apps page for Health and Fitness—the only two titles available are simply featured on the Store's top-level homescreen. Oh, and while there are categories for Government and Security, Windows 8 developers have yet to create any apps for them. It's understandable that some of these categories have yet to be fully populated—by our count, there are only 207 apps in the Store, 30 of which are games—but for what is billed as a Release Preview build, it doesn't instill much confidence in the final release.

There are some gems, of course. Both Rowi and Tweetro are two very nice Twitter clients that take many of Metro's stylistic flourishes to heart (the former doesn't come close to its Windows Phone 7 counterpart). Lusso is a magazine app that boats a gorgeous UI, with the option to view issues as they would appear in print, or as or as simple text (which is easier to read than panning and swiping a digital page). 576 KByte, meanwhile, is a Hungarian-language gaming magazine that displays its article text with a similar horizontal scroll design. But such experiences can, at times, feel fleeting. The developers at the Financial Times, for example, appear to have never even heard of Metro. News apps such as Figaro, The Register, Sky News, and Newsy are remarkably similar in their grid-and-thumbnail heavy design. In fact, there is visual sameness to many recent apps included in the Release Preview store.

Enlarge/ Someone should introduce the Financial Times to a little something called Metro.

However, given the rapid improvement in application quality from Windows 8's previous public iteration, it's important not to read into these observations too deeply. There are, of course, many apps from big third-party developers that we have yet to see, with features and polish that likely won't be revealed until the last possible moment. Things will undoubtedly change.

And yet, for what is billed as a Release Preview, it's hard to ignore the Windows Store's current state. Entire categories sit near-empty, waiting to be filled, and those apps that remain are merely good, but not "great."

Yawn. There is only one Microsoft App that counts. It is called Office. A large part of the failure of .net is a result of the fact that Microsoft never upgraded its primary applications to run on it. They still don't seem to have any plans for Office on Win RT. I guess we are going to see some kind of Office touch UI at least on tablets some day. But will it have anything that really exploits Windows 8? Until Microsoft has a UI that is a major functional improvement for Office or Visual Studio, their efforts are just a bad joke. Windows 8 is a downgrade unless there is some value in a touch UI. There will not be any significant value in a touch UI until that UI really helps someone do a better job at some significant work.

I agree with JoshV, I too am unimpressed by any of the apps as well. For all the talk about "Metro," none of them are even close to tapping into its potential. I'd much rather go to their web pages in chrome than use the "metro" app because none of them are very intuitive.I must say I also don't care much for the horizontal scrolling. Add that on to the fact all the menus are always hidden, it makes getting around that much harder. The apps on the ipad make sense. The apps on Windows 8 so far just make things more difficult.

You warn us not to read too deeply into the lack of apps on the store and yet that is what this article is about. Alexandra Chang, in her Wired piece about Win8 RP, noted that much of the applications you are seeing now are akin to proof-of-concepts and that the lack of applications isn't a concern at this point in production. The best-of apps are supposed to feel like inspirations towards developers, and it sounds like many are quite successful in their application of metro flourishes. We have about five months until Win8 is released and some of the stuff they were able to show off today is already ahead of anything android has been able to accomplish with apps, and especially widgets, since its debut.

You should have written more about the successes and failures associated with converting apps to a metro interface and less time hand-wringing about the quantity of me-too applications or the lack thereof.

The Financial Times isn't going to do anything that looks like Metro. They're going to do something that looks like the Financial Times. That has been their signature look for years and it's smart to continue with their visual identity. That's what their readers expect.

The Financial Times isn't going to do anything that looks like Metro. They're going to do something that looks like the Financial Times. That has been their signature look for years and it's smart to continue with their visual identity. That's what their readers expect.

I think it's totally possible to create an app that follows the design guidelines of a given platform while still preserving your brand and identity. It's something a lot of media companies grapple with, and have managed to do successfully. The New York Times' mobile app is a good example of this if you compare its design across multiple platforms.

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

Not really, but starting with the Consumer Preview you can use Alt+F4 or drag the app from the top to the bottom of the screen to close it.

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

Not really, but starting with the Consumer Preview you can use Alt+F4 or drag the app from the top to the bottom of the screen to close it.

Thanks, I didn't know about the drag-to-bottom feature. I still don't like the Metro style, though, and I don't know what the hell Microsoft is thinking by trying to force it onto the desktop. I'm sure it will be fine for tablets, of course.

I assume that's in reference to this assault upon all that is just and good.

(Ten free Internets to anyone who can honestly say they've watched that thing in its entirety.)

I clicked. At 3:46 I wondered where the screaming was coming from, then I realised it was me.

(Up there in the 'sentences never uttered by a real human being' charts is 'I showed my guests WebSlices™ by talking about Frank's online auction shopping'. And everything else that came out of the mouths of these... people?)

Considering how important Metro is for Microsoft's latest attempt to be relevant in the tablet space, I expected to see a lot more than glorified web pages as apps (note: I have not installed or used W8 myself). I seem to recall Apple showing off iWork back in Jan 2010 on their soon-to-be released first-gen iPad- something that impressed me as to their seriousness about the productive potential of the platform. Where is the similar effort here? Are we expecting to see something this Fall upon final release?

If this is any real indication of how far behind Microsoft is (it has already been 2.5 years), then their tablets may remain irrelevant well into 2013. With Android lagging in the tablet space, there would seem to be some opportunity for 2nd place, but that window may soon be closed.

While I'm not known as the biggest Microsoft fan out there, to be fair, I do think we have to give this some time. I mean, seriously, the OS isn't out yet, and some internals are bound to change. I would think that many developers are playing around, but won't put much of the serious work into apps until the OS is actually out.

I expect to see a few hundred apps on opening day. That's not the problem, iOS had just a bit over 500 when Apple first opened the app store, and now it's well over 600,000. So don't worry just yet.

Good god! If this is their "best", I would hate to see the worst! I have most of these apps already on my phone...tell me again why I need this on the desktop? Oh yeah, so Microsoft can make money! No thanks, I will be moving to a more open platform! Someone please tell Microsoft that if we WANTED a closed, proprietary OS with walled gardens, we would have all bought Macs!

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

Not really, but starting with the Consumer Preview you can use Alt+F4 or drag the app from the top to the bottom of the screen to close it.

Thanks, I didn't know about the drag-to-bottom feature. I still don't like the Metro style, though, and I don't know what the hell Microsoft is thinking by trying to force it onto the desktop. I'm sure it will be fine for tablets, of course.

You can also close the Metro apps now by going to the start screen, moving the mouse to the left edge of the screen, then right-clicking the preview "peek" view of the app you want to close. A "Close" context menu should pop up at that point. Again, as the prior poster said, Consumer Preview and later.

It's amazing the amount of press Windows 8 is getting across the tech sites. Are we up to 10+ articles per site per week now?

Well, even if some Apple fanboys may disagree, it IS the most important consumer technology topic of the year. Polarizing as it may be, Windows 8 is going to be ubiquitous soon enough, and the paradigm shift from Microsoft is going to affect hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, a few more years down the line.

You can also close the Metro apps now by going to the start screen, moving the mouse to the left edge of the screen, then right-clicking the preview "peek" view of the app you want to close. A "Close" context menu should pop up at that point.

This does not come as a surprise to me. Unlike Apple, Microsoft has not instilled a culture of design importance in its developers. Now that Microsoft has started to care about good design, developers will too--it'll just take a little while.

Have you tried this desktop in windows 8 ? On a PC with a mouse and keyboard. It is a disaster between Metro apps and traditional apps. The user experience is broken and disjointed at the least.

To speak plain its fucked

It's pretty bad. There are three off-screen bars of controls (task switcher, toolbar, charm bar), and absolutely no affordances to indicate they even exist. You can sort of luck into the task switcher and the charm bar with mad mouse flailing, but the toolbar, where essential app commands are stashed, is much harder to find – it's a right-click to bring it up. It's the equivalent of putting everything in context menus. Oh, and context menus are still there, too. Will right-click bring up a context menu or the toolbar? Who knows.

I imagine a lot of developers have begun work on Metro apps but are waiting for MS to enable purchases. Right now, everything is free.

as far as nice apps, the Soluto remote assistance / pc management app is quite capable and visually appealing. it does a great job of following Metro design principles without being cookie-cutter. Sketchbook Express is another nice app. Of course, there are others, including some that were available in the Consumer Preview that have been removed (e.g. Hydro Thunder Hurricane and Pinball FX2).

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

In general you don't need to close a metro app. They will close automatically when memory gets sparse. They don't run if they aren't visible, so they don't hog the system. You only really need to close an app when it starts to misbehave / err for some reason.

zee_jay wrote:

Please don't try to sell this OS to my mom.

Why? Because she doesn't need to think anymore about what is running and what not and what needs to be closed to free memory and cpu?

So do any of these come with a "close" button? I've been playing around a bit with the various preview versions, and Metro just comes across as annoying as hell, especially when you have to use the Task Manager to actually stop running the Metro programs, er, excuse me, "apps".

In general you don't need to close a metro app. They will close automatically when memory gets sparse. They don't run if they aren't visible, so they don't hog the system. You only really need to close an app when it starts to misbehave / err for some reason.

zee_jay wrote:

Please don't try to sell this OS to my mom.

Why? Because she doesn't need to think anymore about what is running and what not and what needs to be closed to free memory and cpu?

Maybe because it was hard enough to do family tech support over the phone with only the control panel. Now we have 2 control panels to start with one in metro the other desktop. How do you explain to your mother how this is better ?

You can also close the Metro apps now by going to the start screen, moving the mouse to the left edge of the screen, then right-clicking the preview "peek" view of the app you want to close. A "Close" context menu should pop up at that point.

Then all you have to do is simply hold down Alt-C, the up arrow, and caps-lock keys while shaking the mouse right and left three times.

(There's also a voice-command shortcut but it takes three minutes to get through the entire thing, and requires speaking in a high clown voice near the end. Use the keyboard and mouse combination above instead.)